If you are a parent of a child between the ages of 0 and 18: please do yourself the favor of reading Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: HoIf you are a parent of a child between the ages of 0 and 18: please do yourself the favor of reading Jonathon Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”. It may save yourself much frustration, fear, and grief down the line.
Haidt’s book is the inevitable endpoint of research and knowledge that started in 2010 with Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to To Our Brains” and followed, in 2022, by Johann Hari’s book “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t pay Attention—-and How to Think Deeply Again”.
Haidt’s book provides conclusive (or pretty damned near) evidence of what Carr could only hypothetically predict would happen 14 years later and substantiates, with further studies and statistics, what Hari was saying in his book.
The basic premise is this: Sometime around the years 2010 to 2015, something drastic and worrisome started happening to children born in the late-1990s (a demographic of children often referred to as “Gen Z”). Rates of childhood depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation began to skyrocket across the country. This was across racial, ethnic, and gender lines, although it seemed to effect girls more.
Haidt and his researchers believe that a combination of factors are the reason for these high rates of mental illness among children.
One factor is a type of parenting called “helicopter parenting” that became prevalent, which essentially involves an extreme overprotection of children, out of an irrational sense of safety, that does not allow—-or over-regulates—-certain childish activities that children of the ‘70s and ‘80s engaged in quite regularly: climbing trees, walking unsupervised to the park or school or store, playing on a playground, skateboarding, staying in a house by him or herself.
Another factor is the prevalence of devices that allowed children a preponderance of “screen time” that far exceeded previous norms in previous generations. Haidt directly links this rise of device usage to the introduction of smartphones (specifically, iPhones, which were brought to market in 2007) and popular social media platforms like Facebook (launched in 2004).
A third factor is an inexplicable “underprotection” of children from the Internet and, specifically, social media sites. So-called helicopter parents were fearful of their children playing on a jungle gym, but they seemed to have a complete lack of worry about their children being vulnerable to cyberbullying or on-line sexual predators. One explanation for this—-given by parents themselves in studies—-is the parents’ own distractedness and addiction to device usage.
Haidt’s solutions—-based on the advice of mental health professionals, educators, and social scientists—-is weirdly simple: Don’t give your kid a smartphone until they are about 16-18; Limit kids in both time and access to the Internet; allow kids to do more activities unsupervised; increase the amount of playtime for kids.
According to almost every scientific study, playtime has been shown to be vitally important to a child’s development. Despite this fact, many schools have limited or eliminated playtime and replaced it with more academics, such as testing, to detrimental results. Thankfully, there is a swing back towards more playtime during school hours, especially more unsupervised playtime.
Even Haidt acknowledges that it goes against every fiber in one’s being to let your kid walk to the grocery store in town by him or herself. On the same token, it’s hard to give up the “babysitter” benefits of the iPad or iPhone.
I’ll be honest: I get a shitload of laundry and house-cleaning done when my daughter is curled up on the couch playing God-knows-what on her iPad, and while I trust that my daughter is playing appropriate games and not browsing Youtube for porn, I realize that it’s not the healthiest thing for her.
Seriously, Haidt’s book is an important resource for parents, teachers, and health care providers. We need to be more aggressive advocates for the health of our children, but if healthier children means loosening the reins and letting our kids engage in more risky activities by themselves while simultaneously limiting—-or forbidding—-access to stupid shit like Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook, then we need to do some serious soul-searching as parents....more
I honestly didn’t expect to shed a tear over Hunter Biden’s memoir “Beautiful Things”, but holy shit if I didn’t cry like a little baby by the end of I honestly didn’t expect to shed a tear over Hunter Biden’s memoir “Beautiful Things”, but holy shit if I didn’t cry like a little baby by the end of the first chapter. He really got me in the feels.
I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into Biden’s memoir. I was vaguely aware that his name got dragged into the news by Trump and his lackeys over something to do with a missing laptop and several billion dollars allegedly paid to him by Ukrainian officials for something evil and nefarious. I didn’t pay much attention to the news because I generally didn’t pay much attention to anything Trump and his lackeys said during the last four years, mainly because everything they said was bullshit.
In any case, the whole Hunter-Ukraine thing sounded exactly like what it was: a last-ditch effort by Trump to pull a manufactured scandal out of his ass to make Joe Biden look bad by attacking his kid. Funny how Trump-humpers had no problem with that, but rewind four years ago when somebody made a disparaging remark about Barron Trump, Trump’s youngest son, and one would have thought the world was ending. How dare the Democrats and Hillary attack Trump’s son! It’s a travesty! Never mind that the comment never came from Hillary but someone on Twitter (of course) who was immediately reprimanded and censured by most, if not all, Democrats, including Hillary. But whatever. As with all the hypocritical bullshit that Trump and his lackeys liked to spew and regurgitate, the bottom-line was this: they could dish it out, but they couldn’t take it.
That’s neither here nor there and completely beside the point, as Biden’s memoir devotes only a single brief chapter to that whole malarkey. He doesn’t give a shit. For two reasons: 1) It was all a lie, and 2) He was so fucked up on crack cocaine at the time, none of the bullshit fazed him anyway.
Biden’s memoir is a shitstorm of sadness, awfulness, and utter depravity, which, in my opinion, makes it probably one of the best memoirs I have read in a long time. It also goes without saying that it’s written by the son of a currently sitting President, which makes it, strangely, a weirdly brave and important memoir.
Seriously, if something like this had been published in years past, the very existence of it would be a scandal—-and probably a politically suicidal one. The fact that President Joe allowed it says a lot about him.
But this is Hunter’s memoir, not Joe’s. This is about a kid who survived a car accident as a child that instantly killed his mother and infant sister and nearly killed his older brother, Beau. This is about a kid who couldn’t go to bed every night after the accident unless he knew that his brother was right there with him. This is about a man who sat by his older brother’s bedside as his older brother died of a horribly vicious brain cancer. This is about a man who, already dealing with a serious drinking problem, escalates to crack cocaine addiction as a way of dealing (or not dealing) with grief. This is about a guy who, when his family intervenes to get him into a rehab center, goes into the front door of the rehab center, waits for his family to leave, immediately checks out, and heads to a nearby hotel to go on a three-day crack binge. This is about a dude who brags that, in any of the fifty states at anytime of day, he could find a crack dealer within 30 minutes. This is about an asshole who knew he was an asshole but didn’t care because he didn’t have any reason that he could think of to continue living.
Strangely enough, this is also about a miraculous redemption, one that seems so utterly unbelievable that, at times, I thought I was reading a novel. A really bad one, since a redemption ending like this would be laughable in a Hallmark movie of the week. Hell, it’s unbelievable even for a British Royal Family scandal.
But Real Life is like that sometimes.
Seriously, this book is a roller-coaster of emotions, but that’s par for the course for a memoir about addiction and grief and the power of love. As cliche as it is, it will still get you in the feels....more
Like noir? Like comic books? Tired of boring old superhero comics? Try the writing team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Nine out of ten doctors recoLike noir? Like comic books? Tired of boring old superhero comics? Try the writing team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Nine out of ten doctors recommend Brubaker/Phillips as an important part of one’s graphic novel literary diet.
High in cynicism but without all the unsettling side effects, Brubaker/Phillips’s comics are riveting, suspenseful, and smart.
From the makers of “Fatale”, “My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies” follows the tragic tale of a girl named Ellie, who is just starting out in rehab. She has an unhealthy fascination with drug addicts stemming from her childhood, watching her mother get high and slowly kill herself with drugs.
When she meets Skip, another lost soul in rehab, things take a weird turn. What Ellie considers romantic, others would consider toxic. But, hey, it’s her life...
“MHHABJ” is carefully formulated to create depressive thoughts about life and to enhance one’s deep disgust and hatred for humanity.
Highly recommended for sufferers of cheeriness and happy thoughts. Do NOT take with food. Take with plenty of alcohol. May cause loneliness, chronic misanthropy, a desire to slit one’s wrists, and a general life-long malaise. In some severe cases, it may cause diarrhea. ...more
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